12.28.2008

Santa's Sad Song Sack

What if Santa brought a sack of songs down the chimney instead of toys? What if all those songs were of the sad sack variety? What if he brought twelve because he knows about a certain song associated with his time of year and he's into drawing parallels between that and other parts of his life? What if Santa was meta? What if I decided this was a valid concept for today's post?

He 'ho ho ho'd' into my apartment, despite the lack of a chimney. I assumed he'd climbed through the old milk delivery door in my kitchen, but he could have come through the old radiator just as easily. A man of myth, he has the skeletal structure of a mouse. No doorway he can't pass under, no passage he cannot traverse. He combines the elasticity of Mr. Fantastic with the giant form of Kingpin. Santa left a red velvet bag on my hardwood floor. It held the full shape of a pomegranate despite appearing airy. And so, after a moment of consideration, and 3 rumtastic eggnogs, I broke into that yuletide duffel... Inside were 12 excellent indie songs, sad, excellent indie songs with a note that read in elegant script: Santa's Sad Song Sack. (Warning: All of these songs are sad sack, or depressing to some degree... but all of them are also amazing and brilliantly composed)

1. Leslie Anne Levine - The Decemberists from Castaways And Cutouts:A haunting, beautiful and melancholy song about the ghost of a baby girl wandering the afterlife purposelessly forever.Best Line: "Fifteen years gone now I still wander this parapet and shake my rattle bone"

2. I Don't Blame You - Cat Power from You Are Free:Artistic/emotional/personal sacrifice, loss of control, and wispy, sorrowful vocals by Chan Marshall.Best Line: "Then you would recall the deadly houses you grew up in just because they knew your name"

3. Black Cab - Jens Lekman from Oh You're So Silent Jens:A song about missing the last train after the party, wanting desperately to get home, and questioning the safety of London's most iconic Hackney carriages. Heavier tonally than lyrically.Best Line: "They might be psycho killers, but tonight I really don't care. So I say turn up the music, take me home or take me anywhere"

4. New York, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down - LCD Soundsystem from Sounds Of Silver:Brilliantly captures the feeling of having outgrown the city you live in, wanting to love it, but having fallen out of love.Best Line: "New York you're safer and you're wasting my time"

5. Val Jester - The National from Alligator:Possibly about romantic love, but I prefer to think of it as the lament of a father for letting his daughter run away... or losing her. It's a song of parental loss.Best Line: "All the most important people in New York are nineteen"

6. Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe - Okkervil River from The Stage Names:Poignantly states that life lacks the happy contrivances in movies.Best Line: "No fade in, film begins on a kid in the big city"

7. How To Be A Perfect Man - Songs:Ohia from Axxess & Ace:Jason Molina pins down the feeling of being the placeholder in a relationship, when your lover will leave you for the right person, and you know it.Best Line: "Be mine till you're reminded of something better"

8. Shoot Doris Day - Super Furry Animals from Rings Around The World:Mostly the ambiance, tone and minor-chord echoes carry it's sadness, but it's also about loss and change.Best Line: "People never stay the same, it's a fight between the wild and tame"

9. This Boy Is Exhausted - The Wrens from Meadowlands:Captures the feeling of not knowing what to do with your life, working hard because you have to and believing that it's far too late to do anything better.Best Line: "Tied to work, splitting rock, cutting diamonds, 100 days with no pay, not anymore"

10. Maps - Yeah Yeah Yeahs from Fever To Tell:This song isn't entirely sad, but it's a soft spot on a predominantly post-punk, heavy guitar album, and it's beautiful!Best Line: "Wait, they don't love you like I love you"

11. Pink Bullets - The Shins from Chutes Too Narrow:The way an important relationship alters the course of your life and takes the wind out of your sails when it ends.Best Line: "When our kite lines first crossed we tied them into knots, and to fly apart we had to cut them off"

12. The Death Of Ferdinand DeSaussure - The Magnetic Fields from 69 Love Songs:Love is something we can't understand with words, with science, with observation. It's a complex organism beyond the bounds of great thinking. Not a sad song, but a great one.Best Line: "You can't use a bulldozer to study orchids"

Santa compels you to find these songs, hear them, love them, and try not to let them get you down.